Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of computer processors. More particularly, the invention relates to an apparatus and method using subdivided swapchains for improved virtual reality implementations.
Description of the Related Art
A head-mounted display (HMD) is a display device worn on the head of a user that includes a small display optic in front of the user's eyes. A typical HMD has either one or two small displays with lenses and semi-transparent mirrors embedded in a set of eyeglasses, helmet, or visor. Miniature display units are used which may include liquid crystal displays (LCDs), liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS), or organic LED (OLED). Some vendors employ multiple micro-displays to increase total resolution and field of view. HMDs may display just computer generated images (CGIs) (virtual reality) or a combination of live images from the real world and CGIs (augmented reality).
HMDs include processors such as central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) for executing applications which generate sequences of images to be displayed within the HMDs. There are two types of latency when rendering images to head mounted displays (HMDs) for virtual and augmented reality. The first type of latency is the delay between the application starting to render a frame, and the display showing the frame. The second type of latency is the delay between the user rotating her head and the display showing the new orientation. The first type of latency will be referred to as “render latency” while the second type of latency will be referred to as “motion latency.”